The present application claims the benefit of Korean Patent Application No. 00-71379 filed on Nov. 28, 2000, and Korean Patent Application No. 01-48359 filed on Aug. 10, 2001, each of which is herein fully incorporated by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of controlling a disk writing operation based on a remaining battery capacity. This method is applicable to a portable device such as a notebook or a disk drive which uses a battery as a power source.
2. Description of the Related Art
The dimensions and weight of electronic notebooks (xe2x80x9cnotebooksxe2x80x9d) are getting smaller and lighter. As a result, they are widely used at present.
Generally, an electric power is supplied to a notebook from a battery and/or an AC power line. However, because the battery capacity of the notebook is limited, the notebook cannot be used for more than a few hours. In addition, a disk drive included in the notebook is driven at a high speed and thereby requires a high power consumption. This reduces significantly the power supplying time of the battery equipped in the notebook.
Furthermore, because the disk drive in the notebook is driven at a fixed maximum high speed whenever it is activated, a driving time of the disk drive to reach the fixed maximum speed is relatively long and a large amount of driving current is needed to reach and maintain the maximum driving speed. These factors prevent extension of battery supplying time for the notebooks or the like.
To resolve such problems, a new Patent Application No. 99-41946 was filed in Korea Industrial Property Office on Sep. 30, 1999 on behalf of LG Electronics, Inc. with an entitlement of xe2x80x9cmethod and apparatus of driving a disk based on battery remaining capacityxe2x80x9d. The invention described in that Korean Patent Application is to extend the power supplying time of a battery by adjusting the speed of a disk inserted in a disk drive based on the battery""s remaining electric power capacity.
However, in the method discussed in Korean Patent Application No. 99-41946, the battery may be completely discharged while the disk in the disk drive is being driven at an adjusted, lower speed if the remaining electric power capacity of the battery is low. If the battery is completely discharged while the inserted disk is being written, then the writing operation is abnormally terminated. At the abnormal termination of the writing operation, information on a writing-terminated track is not written in a Program Memory Area (PMA) reserved on the disk, so that the last recording position of the disk is not preserved. This makes it difficult to append data to the writing-terminated disk. Further, because the writing-terminated disk does not contain any information regarding the status of the writing-terminated track, a session including the writing-terminated track cannot be closed. This creates a problem in reading the disk because the writing-terminated disk containing an opened session cannot be read by a reproduction-only disk drive such as a CD-ROM drive.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method of controlling a disk writing operation based on a remaining battery capacity (i.e., remaining electric power capacity of a battery), which ensures the normal completion of the disk writing operation at all times. The method determines whether or not to end the disk writing operation in advance after checking the remaining electric power capacity of a battery equipped in a notebook, a portable disk drive or the like, while recording data to a writable disk. The method also calculates an expected suppliable (use) time of the battery before recording data.
A method of controlling a disk writing operation based on a remaining battery capacity in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, detects a currently remaining battery capacity, compares the detected remaining battery capacity with a reference capacity required for conducting the normal completion of a writing operation, and conducts data writing or completion of the writing operation based on the comparison results.
A method of controlling a disk writing operation based on a remaining battery capacity in accordance with another embodiment of the present invention, estimates a suppliable capacity of a battery (i.e., remaining battery capacity), determines whether it is possible to record an amount of data requested to be written to a recording medium in view of the estimated suppliable capacity of the battery, and controls a disk writing operation according to the determination results.
The present invention will become more fully understood from the detailed description given hereinbelow and the accompanying drawings which are given by way of illustration only, and thus are not limitative of the present invention and wherein: